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Court Cases

May 14, 2013

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission said an Iowa jury awarded $240 million in damages, a
record for the agency, in a trial accusing a Texas-based turkey
processing company of severe abuse and discrimination against
workers with intellectual disabilities.

The jury in federal court in Davenport, Iowa, found that
Hill Country Farms Inc., doing business as Henry’s Turkey
Service, subjected 32 men to verbal and physical harassment,
harsh living conditions and other abuses from 2007 to 2009,
after 20 years of similar mistreatment, the EEOC said today in a
statement.

The Goldthwaite, Texas-based company employed the men in
Iowa, where they worked eviscerating turkeys. The EEOC presented
evidence that the company exploited the workers because their
intellectual disabilities made them vulnerable and unaware of
their rights, the agency said.

May 13, 2013

A federal court has upheld a $5.75 million settlement of a lawsuit alleging rampant student-on-student sex abuse at the Hawaii Center for the Deaf and Blind.

The lawsuit claimed that a group of older students who called
themselves “the ringleaders” bullied, terrorized, assaulted, robbed,
gang raped and sodomized younger, smaller students at the school.

The parents of the victims blamed the school administration, the
state of Hawaii, and school counselors for not providing a safe school
environment and for trying to cover up the abuse.

Each of the class members will receive $20,000 or more, depending on
the degree of abuse they suffered and other factors that figure into the
impact of the abuse and the amount of damages they are owed for their
injuries, such as whether the abuse affected their job history, mental
health, substance abuse and other evidence of physical, psychological
and emotional consequences.

May 10, 2013

A U.S. District Court judge has brought a definitive end to a large,
long-running class action case involving nursing home residents with
developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Lead plaintiff Loretta Rolland, now 71, and four other plaintiffs
brought the case against the state of Massachusetts in 1998. They contested the state system
of placing people with intellectual or developmental disabilities in
nursing homes, saying that these residents were not being given “active
treatment” in these facilities, and that many were capable of living in
other settings. The class of plaintiffs eventually exceeded 1,800 people
as the case stretched on for 15 years.

The plaintiffs sought other care options, such as specialized group
homes, for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They
also wanted nursing homes to provide more active, comprehensive care
plans for those who could not move into different settings. Opponents
included the families of some of the nursing home residents, who felt
their loved one required care in the skilled setting and feared forced
removals.

The Department of Justice announced today the settlement of its lawsuit
against the Golden Corral restaurant in Westland, Mich., which alleged
that the owners and operators of the Golden Corral violated the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by denying service to a mother and
her minor children based on the appearance of the children’s skin due
to a genetic skin disorder.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit, alleged that the manager of
the Golden Corral restaurant demanded that Danielle Duford and her four
daughters leave the restaurant based on the appearance of the
children’s skin caused by a genetic skin disorder, epidermolysis
bullosa, which causes blisters to form on the skin in response to minor
injuries and temperature changes.
Despite Duford informing the restaurant manager of her
children’s disability and repeatedly emphasizing that they did not have a
contagious disease, the manager required the family to immediately
leave the restaurant, claiming that he had received complaints from
other customers.
Title III of the ADA prohibits public accommodations, such as
restaurants, from discriminating against people on the basis of
disability, or their association with an individual with a disability,
in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods or services offered.

Yesterday, the United States District Court for the District
of Vermont became the first court in the country to interpret the Mental Health
Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008—and that decision
is favorable to mental health patients.

The defendant argued that the Interim Final Regulations
under MHPEA require that, in addition to demonstrating that mental health
services were treated in a different manner than medical-surgical services,
patients have to demonstrate that “no clinically appropriate standard of care
would permit a difference,” to prove violation of MHPAEA. The Court disagreed,
finding that “the Parity Act was promulgated to eliminate impermissible
disparity in the benefits afforded for mental health and substance abuse
disorders when compared to those afforded medical/surgical conditions.
... It stands to reason that plan administrators would also bear the
burden of establishing, under the Parity Act, why mental health and medical
benefits are treated differently based upon divergent clinical standards.”

May 07, 2013

An Iowa jury on Wednesday awarded a total of $240 million to 32 mentally
disabled Iowa turkey processing plant workers for what government
lawyers described as years of around-the-clock abuse and discrimination
by the Texas company that oversaw their care, work and lodging.

The
federal jury in Davenport determined that Henry’s Turkey Service, of
Goldthwaite, Tex., violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by
creating a hostile living and working environment and imposing
discriminatory conditions of employment. The jury also found that the
company acted with “malice or reckless indifference” to the men’s civil
rights.

Jurors awarded each of the men $7.5 million apiece after a
weeklong trial that featured emotional testimony from social workers
who described the physical and verbal abuse they suffered. That includes
$5.5 million apiece in compensatory damages for their pain and
suffering and $2 million apiece to punish the company for knowingly
violating the law.

In a decision that legal experts are calling "stunning," an Iowa jury
this morning awarded $240 million to the 32 mentally disabled men who
faced decades of discrimination and abuse while working for Henry's
Turkey Service in Atalissa.

When jurors announced the judgment, after less than eight hours of
deliberation, Sherri Brown, the sister of one of the 32 men, broke down
in tears inside the Davenport courtroom.

"I totally lost it," she said later. "I wanted the jury to make a
statement so that my brother Keith and all of those men would know that
someone had heard them. And if this isn't a statement, I don't know what
is."

The $240 million judgment reflects $2 million in punitive damages for
each of the 32 men, plus $5.5 million in compensatory damages for each
of the men.

In what’s believed to be a first-of-its-kind case, a family is bringing a
federal lawsuit after a photo of their son with Down syndrome was
doctored and spread across the Internet.

Adam Holland was 17 in 2004 when he was photographed taking part in
an art class at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, which serves people with
developmental disabilities. In the image, Holland is seen smiling,
holding up a piece of paper with a picture that he drew.

Nearly a decade later, however, Holland’s parents, Pamela and Bernard
Holland of Nashville, Tenn., say in court papers that they were stunned
to find the image of their son altered and reposted numerous times
across the Web.

In one case the Hollands found that a Tampa, Fla. radio station
posted the photo of their son with his drawing replaced by the words
“Retarded News.” Another website called Sign Generator allegedly made a
version available to download for a fee under the heading “Retarded
Handicap Generator.” And in a third instance, the family says that a
Minnesota man posted the image on Flickr with the words “I got a boner”
in place of their son’s drawing.

Now the Hollands are suing the radio station’s owner, Cox Media
Group, as well as the owner of the Sign Generator website and the Flickr
user. In a federal court filing last week the family said that posting
the “unauthorized, deceptive, false, misleading and defamatory images”
caused “severe mental anguish and emotional distress” and they’re
seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling $18 million.

May 06, 2013

An eighth-grade student
with disabilities was sexually assaulted in an empty classroom at Oak
Hill School five years ago, according to a lawsuit filed in Tuscaloosa
County Circuit Court last week.

The suit filed by the girl’s mother claims that a 14-year-old male student assaulted the then-14-year-old girl in 2007.

The
complaint names the school’s former principal, two teachers and a
teacher’s aide as defendants. Tuscaloosa City Schools is not named
because the system receives state funding and is immune from lawsuits in
all but a few circumstances.